Taurus 44 Mag

[KirovPDR]

Posting this for a friend who owns one...

He buys the 300 grain bullets and they load perfectly.

He reloads some of the 330 grains, and they are too long to close the cylinder when sized to the specified length in his reload manual.

My solution: Push the bullet more till it matches up with COL of the factory loads.

His fear (and why I am posting this) is that seating the bullet deeper in the brass will create an overpressure and blow his gun up. We have argued (in a friendly way) about this issue.

So let's see what the experts say!

PS. Murphy...check your PM's!

 

[BrownBear]

Shouldn't be a problem if you reduce loads sensibly, then work back up to the new max charge for the deeper seating (which will almost certainly be lower than standard). It's pretty straight forward if you have done load development and testing before. I'd be more concerned on whether or not you could get an adequate crimp with the new seating depth. I'm betting that you will have minimum clearance below the cylinder mouth, so any bullet creap at all is going to cause a lockup.

 

[Murphy]

Long 44 Loads...

Long 44 Loads...

Layne,

I haven't forgotten about shooting the 500, just looking for a day or even an hour or two without rain.

The 44 question...seating deeper probably wouldn't raise pressure much but if you seat deeper past the crimp groove, you may be up on the ogive (slope) of the nose of the bullet and a crimp wouldn't hold. If there is a front driving band to crimp over this will work, I would just reduce the charge a little and try it, as BrownBear suggested. Also, from the manual I would think the overall length given would be to fit into any 44 mag cylinder. I would check that again. With some styles of the heavy hard cast bullets, they have such a long nose (LFN) they won't fit what could be called a standard cylinder. Ruger Super Redhawks, Colt Anaconda have very long cylinders the Taurus, S&W, and Redhawk/Blackhawks have standard cylinders. With these we have to use the Wide Flat Nose design. (WFN) The nose is short and most of the bullet is in the case, this limits the space for powder, but gets it in the cylinder. Keith style and the LFN designs are long and may not fit all guns. What is this 330 grain we're trying to seat? May have to settle for a measly 300 grains.

Good shootin'.

Murphy

 

[Paul H]

Seating the bullet deeper will raise pressures, I believe Paco Kelley had posted some pressure tests that had been done with different cast bullets that took up different amounts of case capacity, and the effects on pressure.

Now the magic question is, will the pressures be raised enough to damage the gun? First of all, is he using data for 300 or 330 gr bullets? I haven't seen much published data for 330 gr bullets. Also how strong is the gun? Some 44's can take very high pressures, others will be beat up with normal full pressure loads.

If he's using max loads of 300 gr data, and seating the bullet deaper, I would be concerned about excess pressure. If he's using 330 gr data, and not seating the bullet terribly deep, ie making a 44 sp out of it, I wouldn't be as concerned.

My primary concern would be if the bullet is seated deeper than the canalure, how is he crimping the bullet in place? And if the bullet isn't crimped in place, and the bullets are seated out near the face of the cylinder, he runs a very real risk of a bullet being pulled out under recoil and tying up the cylinder.